part of aviation, but not the big part

 I wrote this in June 2020 sometime.  Dates I write things are  important to me, because I lose track of time all the time.

 

 When I was furloughed from UAL in Oct. 2001 I was depressed and collected unemployment about 8 months. I then got my shit together, put my resume into a paper form and applied for a job with Fed Ex Express as it was called then. I got an interview and went into the Oakland Hub in the afternoon and saw a woman by the name of Tammy, not remembering last name. A little about her I learned ws she was from Indiana and had a really nice mustang convertible she drove to Oakland, CA

So, she was a supervisor and hired me an I gave her my resume and she said she would post it on line at the FedEx online site. I took her at her word and was hired and told to come in at 2 am the following morning. Yikes!

When one comes to the FedEx Express Hub at Oakland Airport you come to their entrance. Everything is controlled there by FedEx Security. Going in and going out one has to submit to magnetic imaging inspection. you have to take your shoes off both ways and put them on the belt with everything from your pockets etc. One day on the way in, I buzzed and realize my favorite pocket knife was still in my pocket. They took it  said in the am they would return it when I was leaving. I guess someone wanted it more than I.  I should have given them a bill for the cost of the knife. I tried to suggest that was theft, but they said if you were at the terminal, they would have taken you into a room without windows. Now get your stuff and don't be late for your shift!, Next!

I was hired as a material handler and would driving a tug and pulling dollies, ld 3's and ld7's full and empty to and from airplanes. It turned out I was working for her and although she said she liked my resume and interview I felt she didn't really like me and perhaps thought was after her job. I am a self starter and I was working hard to keep that job and move on into the mechanic end of it in lA where they did their heavy checks. That is what I was doing at UAL SFOMC. I was working on narrow body plans but that is another chapter.

I was moving ahead and we were unloading and loading MD 11's, 727's and Airbus A300's. sometimes I would be assigned to go up into the plane and receive the cans, which is what we called the containers the freight and packages were in. We would receive the cans from the loader and make sure they were facing the right direction and push them towards the rear of the plane and once there, set the floor locks, very important and go get the next can. Once all the cans are in, we would step onto the loader and they would drive it back a foot or two and we would actuate the door closing switch and the big cargo door would close and we would latch it and give it a slap, a procedure to show it was downed latched.

Then we had a choice, ride the platform down and take the stairs. Stairs were safer ad the loader had all kinds of casters on it to position the can in the right orientation to off load onto or off the plane.

If we had loaded a plane, then we would have to  take the dollies to the Dollie corral and leave them there for the next flight and some guys took a break or hung out somewhere. I was disturbed by the condition, the lack of organization of the can corral and would spend time making it right, eating out the bad doilies to next to the fence and the good dollies to the outside of the area easy to get out when needed. at some point when I came back to the area Tammy was in, she asked me where I had been and I said the Dollie corral and I straightened them out. I believe she said did someone tell you to do that and no one above me but my organized brains said, this needs to be done and I took it upon myself to do it. I thin that disturbed her because I had been working on the ramp as material handler for about 6 months when I was told to report to the sort. Tammy told me she thought I was dangerous and I was going to get hurt. I just alright then, and thought, this screwed up. I think that she was worried that her supervisor would see me doing that and ask if I would need to be elevated in my position. I think she was afraid that I wanted her job and she was not going to have me take over. I didn't want her job, I wanted this job in LA working on planes.

She had me transferred inside to the sort and that raised a little bit of a hub Bub. People were all like, he's a material handler, what is he doing in here? I adapted to that job pretty well, made some good friends on the job. When I came to work we would do stretching exercises and someone would lead them and one time I was picked and that was fun. I had got the pattern of the exercises down and many of my co-workers we're teasing me about it. Just about everybody in this work group were black and that was fine with me. I get along with most everybody and we all worked well together.

My supervisor, Cal was a jerk though. He tried pushing me harder than anyone one in his group and was already working hard and harder than many of my co-workers. So one day when he started pushing me and I could tell there others who he was being lenient with, go push them, stop picking on mer. He thought that was disrespectful and after the sort and after shuttle sort he called me to his office and told me I had disrespectful to him and I said how was that. And he said he thought he should write me for insubordination but was going to give me a break because I resisted his efforts to make me worker harder than was safe, harder faster. I told him I thought he was picking on me for being the only white guy and I was working fast enough. He knew he didn't want to fire me I was a very good worker, didn't call in sick or get hurt on the job.

Saturday July 24, 2021

 

 Today. Saturday July 24 on the street in NE Portland. Last night I was listening to music video's on You Tube, another Google enterprise as is Blogger and when I went to bed, music off good. I have also been watching Aircraft videos a guy who is called pilot mentor. I actually purchased his hat. 

 

Back to this part of the story, I woke up this morning to my alarm a rather pleasant melody played on  piano and  instead of music video's that I had left on my phone, there was a speech by General John Kelly who was 45's Joint Chief of staff. I played the video and it was tough to watch. He was talking about 2 marines who had been killed in action and what their job was and how they had died and some of the sequence of events after they were killed as was his own son. I posted the video on my Face Book page because it is important for those of us who are not in the military to know what our people are doing. 

We are insulated from wars that many of us contend should not be fought anyway. War is not the answer.

Living in my truck is a lot better than living in that cave!

For 2.5 years I lived in a cave also known to be the basement of a house on a bluff above the Willamette River.  It was in the U district in Portland, OR. Not to confuse the reader with the U District in Seattle, the space was dreary and unfinished and sleeping quarters were well sealed but one night having left something in the living area, I discovered one of the bad boy/girls as slugs are both sexes with my bare feet. I then had to dress and clean up the mess they created on my carpet and give them a decent burial up the stairs and out in the yard near some  plants because they were dead or dying. I never got to the object I had been going to get as I had to get back to bed after attempting to remove the sticky mess between my toes.  No, I don't want to publish this because it is not finished. 

 

I have decided to publish though, because I am practicing progress, not perfection and consistently inconsistent.

There are some draw backs to living in ones truck. For instance,. I don't plan well and I did not insulate for 26 degree days and snow and ice. Had to stay in a motel for 5 days. I didn't want to die as a frozen popsicle and be discovered smelling like the dead fish pile in the of compost at the collection area in some far off but not far enough countryside for the people living down wind. 

What are those dots at the bottom of the page? Well, they seem to have gone away, left for somewhere else. 

 

This is a lap top computer, but I can't use it on my lap, slides up and I have already used up my drop the coputer optio0n of my apple care having had it repaired two times. This is not the same computer I purchased 9in 2018 or whenever. almost all of it is new or refurbished their description.  

I am both happy and sad. I got $75 for the m/c carrier, the guy was likely willing to pay more, I was grateful he was an adult. There are to many non adults out there, he told me a story of meeting a guy in Beaverton who didn't show up and I shared about the guy who I almost put into the other dimension today. That was something I was trying to determine how to write about it. 

i had stopped at the MLK and Columbia Blvd NAPA store for some QD contact cleaner and spoke a little with no real name or perhaps, no character description a friend from the old Deans car care. I had been to her and JB's her husbands in the past.

But back to the time traveling adventure that almost ruined my day and perhaps weekend and out of town trip in the coming week. As I was leaving the store and driving the short distance to the Kenworth dealership. I was looking in my mirror for a moment like we do after pulling into a road making sure I was not going to get rear ended. I look and there is sat car partway out of the Kenworth dealer with it's nose in my lane. NO time to clear the mirror again., my defensive school bus training took over and I slammed on the brakes and horn at the same time. I am pretty sure I may have locked didn't hit he and his woman friend and I think at the last instant he was able to back up although I was within a few feet of sending them into next week. What I think happened is his friend was talking to him and he was stoned out of his mind and foot was not quite on the brake enough, didn't know he had crept into the busy street. It all happened very fast, hard braking because of a dip shit that should not have been on the road. I pulled into the tech insurance parking lot, my insurer and had to clean up my saw dust bucket that had tipped into the drivers compartment of my truck. Things move. And calm down. 

I did all the right things because I was taught to slam on the brakes if emergency, keep the wheels straight and if necearry hit the other vehicle, no swerving which could tip the bus over or the truck. I need to go back and check for skid marks tomorrow or this evening, no not now. I have a head ache.

Well I keep saying I am grateful to have had the best professional drivers training that I got from the school bus company because I used it today without thinking other than SHIT!

I had just left the NAPA store on MLK and Columbia Blvd and probably not yet up to 35 mph, just going 30 and had just finished looking into my mirror and looked forward and a little Ford Focus had it's nose out in the road, coming from the Kenworth Truck parking lot but the guy was talking to a guy outside, next to the drivers window. I hit the the power assisted 4 wheel disc brakes in my truck, held on tight to the steering wheel with one hand and hit the horn button as hard as I could. I was slowing down but it didn't seem slow enough fast enough. Finally the guy outside the car jumped out of the way and the car backed up at the last possible instant before i hit them and ruined all of our Saturday and beyond. My truck does not pull to one side or the other and I am grateful for that. I proceeded into the Tec Insurance center parking lot, my insurer, turned 180 degrees facing the street let my truck cool down and then shut it down. I had a small mess to clean up, things that were still not quite ready for travel. I cleaned it all up and then put in a couple of eyelets and a bungie cord. I find bungie cords very useful. I sat there for a few more minutes. The guy and his gal drover away as though it was no big deal or perhaps he worried that I was going to come over and have a word with him. Yep, I don't want to go to jail, been there to many time is in the past.5-22-21

 

Another one of my friends is dying. A fellow school bus operator, trainer who gave me a nick name at work, who called me Red Leader from the Star Wars adventures. I am reflecting on their place in my life, my place in my life, that I have had many friends pass from this earth before Ia nd it is often by the grace of providence that I have been blessed with people of great moral character, who have passed before me.  It often begs me the question, why am I still here? 

The silence tonight, the absence of any trains which I hear from the shallowly insulated of my truck, the abscence of any planes, the stillness of the air is a little unnerving. Barely any cars traveling on Killingsworth. The absence of sound reminds me of sept. 11, 2001 when I was camping in the Eastern Sierra's and woke up on that morning to the absince of the the aircraft firefighingh the firdes in the western Sierra's. They had been flying almost all days before that fateful day. 8:30 in hte morning was eairly quiet. and now I am wondering, a,m I alive or am have I sufferend a catostrophc failure nd I am just imagining writing here? There is a moon outside in the S?outhern sky. I opened the door, the next beest thing to sitting outside and listening, feeling, feeling my livfe. Tomorrow I head out to Sisters Oregon to viist my friend Sue Purcell. Haven;t seen her in a few years and she is so close, 4 hours away only. Like a trip to the Eastern Sierra's from the SF Bay Area. I hear some cars. I suspect it is th ea bsence of the heavy transportation that is most contributing to the silence. I can now hear what sounds liek a few cars on NE Alberta ST. 

I have decided tyat it is so quiet it is a good time to brew a cup of tea. The clouds are beginning to mask the moon, They look to be stratus clouds, the puffy kind that fog is often composed of. I have the door to my truck open, because it is spring and it is quiet and relatively warm. like camping a little. Camping in my truck is not like camping in the woods, but there are often sounds that are more acute than if living in a well insulated house. some times i struggle to identify those sounds. It is ok, figured some of them out.